Life, 1884-04-24 · page 3 of 16
Life — April 24, 1884 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Fact" - Life Magazine Cartoon This cartoon satirizes the Knickerbocker Club, an exclusive New York gentlemen's club. The joke shows a young woman looking at the club's windows for the first time, remarking on "what a large family of boys" resides there—implying the club houses numerous men. The humor lies in treating the all-male club membership as though it were a household "family," mocking both the club's insularity and the woman's feigned innocence (or genuine naïveté) about its purpose as a bachelor institution. The accompanying text includes unrelated poem "Charles Reade" and humor pieces about choir singing and New York manners, typical of Life's miscellaneous satirical content from this era (appears to be late 19th century).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
a, i Young Lady (gazing for the first time upon the windows of the Knickerbocker Club): WHAT A LARGE FAMILY OF BOYS THERE IS IN THAT HOUSE ! CHARLES READE. IN THE CHOIR. - RAVE, simple Christie ; kind, capricious Reg ; Margaret, purest gold ’mid heaps of dross ; (This kind given away free.) Perils of sea vanquised by David Dodd ; URING the sermon, one of the quartette fell Perils by land under the Southern Cross ; asleep. Madhouses forced to sun the wrong they hid ; “Now’s your chants,” said the organist to the Prisons compelled their tortures to abate ; soprano. “See if you canticle the tenor.” Heroes and scoundrels, and the deeds they did ; “You would n’t dare duet,” said the contralto. Driven by love, ambition, avarice, hate— “You'll wake hymn up,” suggested the bass. Such men, such women, through such scenes have I “T could make a better pun than that, as sure as my Followed with quickened pulse and eyes grown bright, name’s Psalm!” remarked the boy that pumped the While dwindling hours have slipped unheeded by organ ; but he said it solo that no one quartet. Till dawn made visible the loss of night. [a Bold heart, keen mind that gave these joys to me, APROPOS OF OUR CARTOON. Surely thy rest is earned. God send it thee ! Miss Budd: “Mama, are these really the manners iain of gentlemen?” ‘ I sHALL never be satisfied with the nature of my Mama: ‘My dear, you are inexperienced, This conceptions.—Capel. is New York, you must remember.” comichooks.